


Can't Think of a Word that Rhymes

by feldman



Category: Farscape
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teachers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:34:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times Mr. Crais regrets passing the background check to become a teacher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Think of a Word that Rhymes

**Author's Note:**

> Written from a challenge by Elliejane, "Farscape, high school/college AU". It's been awhile since I've had a homeroom, so I ended up in the teachers' lounge. Title from Alice Cooper's "School's Out".

Bialar sank into the cracked leather of the sofa end nearest the window, planting his elbow on the arm and settling his forehead into his palm with practiced weariness. "I miss the smoke in here." The teachers' lounge had gone smoke free four years ago, and while the walls were still mottled with the resinous stains of harried generations before him, the ghostly staleness it lent the room was more taunt than comfort.

"Yes, because cancer solves everything. Even a few minutes of meditation would help you feel better." 

He pinched the bones of his nose and slid his grip up, hanging his own skull from fingertips lodged against his frontal sinuses. If he didn't open his eyes, perhaps she would go away.

Zhaan continued in a mutter she tried to stifle under the clashing sound of stirring her tea, "Your chakras probably look like ashtrays."

If they did, he would lick them. "Don't you have troubled teens to counsel?"

"I go where I'm needed."

"And not wanted."

Her throaty laugh seemed to catch her by surprise, and he peered at her from amid the pain pressure throbbing around his eyes. She sat across from him in the bad spring chair, shifted to the side closest the window to avoid the ass poking it was infamous for. She had a closet full of rayon caftans in eye poaching colors, though today she'd chosen the least onerous turquoise-with-gold-splotches, which swirled and draped around her frame. "Bialar, you can't let them get to you like this."

"So far this week I have confiscated a surfeit of cannabis, a guitar, two kilograms of thermite, what I suspect is a marital aid--"

"Honestly, no one calls them that anymore--"

"--broke up a fistfight between the Crichton twins, busted a profiteering scheme based on conning freshmen into stealing the fundraiser candy bars," his pique increased as a snowball rolls downhill, "was nearly run over by Sun in the student parking lot, and during my break period just now I walked in on a sexual triad in one of the band practice rooms."

"Ahhh." A sonorous voice rode over his rant with aplomb. "The plugged toilets, the inconsolable crying, the existential panic, the hormonal fire drills...the quotidian melodrama of adolescence."

Zhaan nodded to the principal as he recharged his thermal cup at the coffee urn near the door. Anton Scorpius, Ed.D was decked out in his customary black three piece suit, everything sleek from his silk blue tie and pocket square to his butch waxed ivy league haircut.

"I've been trying to put things into perspective for Mr. Crais, but he's determined to wallow in the stress."

"Perhaps Mr. Crais is aware that you are quite able fly off the handle as well, given sufficient provocation." Dr. Scorpius sipped an inch from his coffee before pressing down the lid. "Maybe if you explained to him why you no longer direct the school play?"

Zhaan's posture and expression curdled, and she glared down at her tea and stirred viciously.

"Nevertheless, Mr. Crais, you mustn't let the little bastards get you down." Dr. Scorpius inclined his head in greeting and left the lounge, having come down from the mountain to dispense wisdom and replenish the caffeine that powered his most-assuredly towering intellect.

Zhaan muttered, "Old bat," but Bialar felt indebted to one old bat for shutting up the other. "Goddess forfend he ever leave that office and talk to a student."

"Or smell them. Because what this week needed was a last hellish gasp of summer to warm up the pubertal funk."

"Flop sweat, cheap cologne and feet." Zhaan reached up from broken spring chair to yank the handle on the ancient window assembly and open the pane with a creak, sticking her head out in search of a breeze. "I'm not saying I agree with you about the smoke, but..."

Bialar sighed, grinding his palm once more against the spot where his third eye chakra was developing pink eye. "There'd be smoke if we burned this place to the ground."


End file.
